KOA, BASA, AND an accompanying uniformed officer found Gunter Nelson sitting at his desk inside the Alice headquarters in Waimea. He looked up when the men entered unannounced.
“Gentlemen, to what do I owe this honor?”
“Thought you might be expecting us.”
“Can’t say I was.”
“Your buddy Garvie Jenkins sends his regards.”
Gunter gave away no tell at all. “Garvie Jenkins?”
Koa was sick of all these smart guys thinking they could get away with anything. “Save the stage acting for the courtroom, Mr. Nelson. You want to tell us a little bit about your trafficking in archaeological artifacts?”
“Perhaps I should consult a lawyer.”
“We have a warrant for your arrest for violations of the Hawai‘i antiquities laws.” Koa read him his rights. “Please come with us. You can call your lawyer from the police headquarters in Hilo.”
After handcuffing Gunter Nelson and sending him off to Hilo, the officers executed a search warrant on the neat white clapboard house Gunter called home. Located halfway up a large pu‘u in Waimea’s version of Nob Hill, it overlooked the little cowboy town and the dry grasslands beyond.
The mess of books and clothes strewn about inside contrasted not only with the simple building but also with Koa’s image of German correctness. For Koa, the disorder reflected the conflict between Gunter’s public persona as perhaps the second most senior astronomer on the island and Gunter’s corrosive unhappiness at failing to win the Alice directorship. Frustrated ambition was written large in the way the man kept his home.
The disarray inside slowed the search, but didn’t stop them from turning the place inside out. While Koa reviewed Gunter’s financial records, looking for evidence of proceeds from the sale of artifacts, Basa searched the house and the garage.
“Koa,” Basa called, excitement palpable in place of his usual calm, “we’ve found something even bigger than we thought. Come look.” Koa walked down the back steps to an unusually large detached workshop-garage. A heavy lock lay smashed on the ground, and the door to a brightly illuminated work area stood open. Inside, a long table occupied the center of the room while workbenches lined three of the four walls. A number of stone artifacts lay scattered on the table and the workbenches.
Koa stood in the room surveying its contents. Three heavy-duty computers, a printer, and a giant monitor occupied one of the workbenches, and immediately to one side stood a commercial graphics plotter, capable of handling poster-sized sheets. A rack on another wall held an array of electronic equipment and a set of aluminum tubes, each about two feet long and three inches in diameter, pointed on the bottom, with whip-like antennas mounted on top. Koa guessed they’d found the seismic testing gear Gunter had used on Mauna Kea, and that Jenkins had employed to find the obsidian mine on Kaho‘olawe.
Huge sheets of corkboard affixed to the walls above the benches held giant, highly detailed geologic maps. Pinned here and there atop the maps were extraordinarily high-resolution satellite photographs and long strips of graph paper covered with multiple wavy black lines, like seismograph readings after an earthquake.
Upon examination, the maps displayed tiny sections of the Big Island, portions of the southern slopes of Mauna Kea, the saddle lands, and Mauna Loa. Various points on the maps bore large and small circles, penned in yellow ink, while four or five other locations were marked with bright red X’s. Koa noted a red X on the collapsed pu‘u on the south side of Mauna Kea where the tunnel emerged from the adze makers’ workshop.
Another map seemed to be a duplicate of the one Piki had found in Skeeter Slade’s helicopter. It bore the same straight red parallel lines across the Pōhakuloa Training Area with the same coordinates at the ends. Unlike Slade’s map, this one featured a large red X over the lava tube where they had found Keneke Nakano’s body. As Koa had guessed from the ledger in the hidden space beneath Jenkins’s truck shop, Jenkins had been feeding the data that Skeeter collected to Gunter, who had the skill to analyze it for the location of hidden caves. And this map proved Gunter’s knowledge of the cavern where they’d found Keneke’s body.
As he thought back on his encounters with Gunter—Koa had developed a rapport with the man—he reflected on Escher’s Reptiles etching on his office wall. Gunter was a chameleon—an upstanding, even esteemed, member of the community by day and a grave-robbing thief by night. It was so often that way. Everyone harbored secrets. Most were just human foibles … but once in a while you came face to face with real depravity. Koa had yet to figure out the litmus test to tell one from the other. Maybe Gunter could shed light on that quandary. Koa was looking forward to interviewing the German.
The evidence pointed to Gunter as Keneke’s killer. Gunter knew of the remote cave where they’d found the body. He’d had a falling-out with Keneke, mostly likely because Keneke had discovered Gunter’s thefts of antiquities. Fearing disclosure, Gunter would have had a powerful motive to kill the young Hawaiian. Gunter had no alibi. Still, Koa doubted that Gunter had the physical strength or the steely courage to have committed the grotesque murder. Then he remembered Dr. Cater’s caveat that if the killer were less than six feet tall, he might have applied a choke hold as he pulled Keneke over backward. Still, Koa wasn’t sure … he just couldn’t see the puppy-eyed Gunter killing and mutilating the Polynesian Tannhäuser, as Gunter had dubbed Keneke.
“What is all this stuff?” Basa wondered aloud.
“Our friend Gunter Nelson is an archaeological treasure hunter. He used all this electronic gadgetry to locate burial caves.”
“You mean like the oil guys use to find gas and oil deposits?”
“Exactly. Except we have a high-tech grave robber.”
“Don’t the oil guys use explosive charges or something?”
“Yeah, and I’ll bet that we’ll find some around here someplace.”
It was a good bet. In a small shed behind the garage, they found two crates of small explosive charges from a Houston oil industry supply company.
Gunter had a lot of questions to answer.